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A Jugaad reading list

Since it was jugaad that got Nicholas to get me to blog on Installing (Social) Order, here’s a ‘jugaad reading list’ that I’ve used in the writing of my doctoral dissertation. It’s reasonably comprehensive and is a combination of newspaper articles, Journal publications and also books. Some of these are accessible online and I do have pdfs of many of the journal publications – so if anyone is looking for the full text please email me at psekhsaria@gmail.com

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About Pankaj Sekhsaria

Pankaj Sekhsaria is author of 'The Last Wave', (http://tinyurl.com/njatxm2) a novel based in the Andaman islands of India. He is also a journalist, photographer and researcher with four books, a dozen peer reviewed papers and nearly 200 newspaper and magazine articles to his credit. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Maastricht University Science and Technology Studies (MUSTS). His Phd research involves studying the techno-scientific practices inside nanotechnology labs in India to understand and articulate the idea of a 'culture of innovation'

I think there are interesting overlaps and possibilities – some of this is explored in the couple of papers I’ve written on this, including that book chapter that is listed in the reading list. If you send me your email id I can email that to you and that could be the start of a discussion. I see significant overlaps between bricolage for instance and there are others like Juakali in Kenya that have a similar understanding and usage. I also have a serious problem with jugaad being described as ‘frugal innovation’ including for the fact that we are never told where the frugality is actually located.

will do thanks, here in the US the high-jacking (not unlike what companies like Apple did with 60’s ethos/aesthetics) of the DIY (do it yourself) movement by the so called “sharing” economy of on demand shifting risk to workers companies like Uber is deeply troubling, especially when mixed with a kind of apps as solutions for complex social/political issues libertarian among the educated young people and the older neo-libbers who make use of them.

One of the key characters of jugaad as I understand it is that it comes from a situation of vulnerability and from absence of resources – there is a survival element to it and that makes a difference. It is, at the same time, a hugely plastic term – concept, process and product at the same time, as much verb as it is a noun. So there are very many ways in which it is already used and mobilised….my attempt has been to document it and try to characterise it in a way that might allow a larger understanding and usage